We Can Make it if We Try
by Nicknack2814
Summary: Rosanna Winchester found herself halfway across the country when the latest apocolypse hit. Unfortunately for her and her brothers, the dead walking was not an easy fix. Unbeknown to her, as she attempts to get back to them, she may make a connection or two that she doesn't want to break.
1. Chapter 1

"What happened?"

"Rosie...look...things got out of hand-"

"Out of hand?! The dead are walking around and eating people Dean! That's a little more than out of hand!" Rosanna cried.

"I know. I know." Dean breathed a heavy sigh down the phone. "I'm sorry. Asmodeaus, he got hold of the croatoan virus. He changed it. Made it worse. We couldn't stop it. Roe...this is...this is the end." Dean choked.

"What? What d'you mean? It can't be! There's always a way to fix it!" Rosie said, suddenly feeling very nauseous. Dean's voice, it was so serious and so...defeated. "What about Asmodeaus? Can't he fix it?"

"That's just it Roe, he's dead. The virus got so out of control so fast...it got him too..." Dean went silent. "It got to a lot of people..."

Rosie took a deep breath and tried to quell her tears. She had nothing to say to that. She could barely process it.

"Rosie...just...come home. Come back to the bunker and we can figure it all out together, okay?" he said with a barely audible sniff.

Rosie nodded and then frowned, shaking her head and letting some sembalance of logic and common sense sneak in.

"What the hell Dean?! The world's literally just fucking screwed us and you want me to travel halfway across the fucking continent to look for you?! On my own?!" Rosie yelled down the phone. "I'm in Georgia! You're in Kansas! Come on!"

"Rosie, the dead are walking," Dean snapped. "I'm pretty sure the phones'll all be down in a matter of days, if not hours...the bunker is safe-"

"And this whole country is not! Neither is the several in between them!" Rosie roared, pacing up and down the road, trying not to draw attention to herself. Cars were lined up down the highway, completely gridlocked. Horns sounded and people were yelling, something Rosie knew would only make things worse.

"I don't know what else to do," Dean sighed.

"Me too," Rosie said, her breath catching. "Have you found anything in the bunker? Any way to stop it?"

"No," he replied. "All we know is that it's not just humans that can succumb to the virus. Crowley showed up here, twitchy as hell and actually afraid...demons, angels, werewolves, vamps, the whole shebang...they're all falling to this thing."

"Fuck," Rosie muttered. "That's all we need! Undead fucking monsters!"

"Just be careful Roe," Dean said quietly. "We'll come get you-"

"No! You're safe! Stay safe! Please!" Rosie cried. "I'll do my best to get back to you but I'm not gonna hurry up about it."

"Maybe if we're both moving towards each other, we'll meet in the middle," Dean suggested.

"Or maybe we'll pass right by each other, or maybe we'll all die...jeez Dean, please...stay where you are." Rosie waited with bated breath for his reply.

"I can't do that Roe, you know I can't," he said, his own voice cracking.

"For fuck's sake Dean! Put Sammy on!" Rosie growled.

She heard the fumbling of hands and then heard Sam in her ear, not at all pleased with where his loyalties seemed to lie.

"We're coming to get you and that is final," Sam said.

"Well then, fuck you too." With that Rosie hung up the phone and set her hands on her car taking deep breaths. She set her eyes back on her phone and begrudingly texted her brothers her co-ordinates, with a quick message to tell them she'd message whenever she moved but until then she was saving her battery.

She slid back into her stiflingly hot car and turned the engine back on, plugging her phone in the car charger and sitting quietly, listening to the hubbub of the chaos around her. The virus broke maybe two and half weeks ago. The word took a couple days to get out and Rosie was working a case in sunny Florida, Miami. People were already en-mass panicking by the time Rosie had managed to close her case and haul her ass in the direction of home, so the nine or so hours it should have taken her to get this far (just outside Atlanta) had ended up taking a week. And it only got worse. She'd been trying to find a way out of Georgia for nearly another week, and that had gotten her stuck in a gridlock out of the city.

She was jolted out of her self-pitying thoughts and regrets by some loud screaming coming from down the car-packed road. Jumping out of her still idling car, she popped the trunk and grabbed her favourite knife. As people ran towards her, she effortlessly slipped around them towards the direction of the anguished screams and rather disturbing hissing noises. Being a hunter, the dead rising had not taken as long for her to come to terms with as it had most people.

Several yards up she spotted them. Three undead, one of which was feasting on a screaming woman, and the other two veering towards a family trapped in a car. Everyone had vacated the area as fast as they could, not that it would help much. Half the people on this highway were probably already bit. Hell, this was the third time today she'd had to deal with this shit. It wouldn't bother her so much if people didn't look at her with about as much fear as they did the dead.

Sighing, she squeezed her hand around her knife and stepped foward. The first guy went down with barely a sound as she thrust the knife through the back of his bloody head. The second turned and nashed it's jaws towards her, but it did nothing to phase her. She stabbed this one sideways, through the temple. Once you've dealt with all manner of monsters, stupid ones like these don't really register on the radar. It was the sheer number of them that was the problem, not necessarily what they were. It wasn't like they had any of their faculties about them.

With that in mind, Rosie walked straight up to the third one and plunged the knife into her head. The woman on the floor was still whimpering, most of her lower internal organs spread out across her stomach and legs.

"I'm so sorry," Rosie whispered, as she knelt next to her, smoothing her bloodied hair out of her face. "I'm so so sorry..."

The knife slipped through her head like butter. Quick and painless, relieving her of the agony she must have been in before her untimely death.

Rosie stood up and wiped the bloody blade on the bottom of her jeans, turning to make her way back towards her car.

"Hey! You! Stop!" A deep male voice sounded from behind her but Rosie just ignored it. She wasn't interested in answering questions about where she learnt to do that. "Police! I'm ordering you to stop!"

Rosie snorted and turned around, raising an eyebrow at him. "I'm pretty sure whatever authority you think you have, died about the same time this world did."

"I said stop! Or I will shoot you!" He raised a gun and Rosie noticed that he'd stepped out of the same car the dead had been up against.

"Well, that'd be a really weird way to say thanks, don't you think?" Rosie said, setting her hands on her hips.

The guy looked at her, his eyes darting all along her face and body, trying to work out what it was he should do. She got it, really she did. Three weeks ago, his response to her stabbing four people in the head in broad daylight, would be just this. It's kinda hard to break a habit when it's drilled into you like it would have been for this guy. Rosie knew she just needed to give his head a minute to catch up with the crap this new world was throwing at them.

"Shane..." The woman sat in the passenger seat called his attention and nodded, seemingly trying to calm him down.

Shane sighed, nodded and lowered the gun. "Sorry..."

"Old habits die hard, right?" Rosie answered, shrugging.

"Yeah, something like that," Shane muttered.

Rosie nodded, turning back to her car and stalking off.

"Wait!" Shane yelled.

"What?!" Rosie huffed, swinging back round. She noticed the woman from the car running along behind him as he came towards her. A small boy gingerly jumped out the back of the car too.

"D'you know what's going on around here?" he asked.

"Me? Why would I know?" Rosie frowned, doing her best to look totally confused.

"Well, you didn't even flinch when you took out all those...things..."

Rosie subdued the chuckle that rose up and threatened to escape her lips. "I've had a lot of experience with monsters."

It was Shane's turn to frown, not sure if she was being serious or not.

"Are you on your own?" the woman asked.

Rosie simply nodded.

"I'm Shane, this is Lori and her son Carl," Shane explained. "She's my partner's wife. He didn't make it out of the city."

Rosie nodded again, not sure why he was telling her this.

"You can stick with us if you want," Lori offered.

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Rosie said.

Shane nodded, so did Lori, and they ushered Carl back to the car as Rosie turned and walked back to her own. She shook her head as she walked, not really sure what to make of the whole thing. They were the first people who hadn't backed away from her with wide and frightened eyes. She slipped back into her own car and shut the door, leaning back and closing her eyes. She hadn't realised she'd fallen asleep until the screams sounded again.

Rosie lurched awake to find Shane tapping on her window. She turned the engine off and opened the door, blinking up at him and rubbing her eyes.

"What's happening?" she asked.

"It's getting worse," he said. "There's a group of ten, all just tumbled out a mini-bus."

"Which direction?" Rosie asked, heading to the trunk. Shane pointed and she nodded.

"We're getting off the highway. They've just dropped napalm on the city and this jam ain't going nowhere. You wanna come with?" he offered.

"Nah, I'm gonna go put those poor people down and then I'll follow." Rosie picked up a machete and Shane followed her around the car and peered in the back of the trunk.

"Holy shit!" Shane exclaimed. "I...my cop alarm bells are going all kinds of crazy!"

Rosie snorted and looked at him. "I told you, I've had a lot of experience with monsters."

"You have no idea how hard my head is screaming at me to arrest you right now," he muttered.

"I think I can guess," Rosie sighed. "Look, you head off and I'll catch up. But if we all go now, those ten dead people'll turn into ten more and before you know it they'll be thousands. These things walk towards noise and the smell of fresh food...if I don't take them out, they'll follow us anyway..."

"Fine, then I'm coming with you," Shane said, taking his gun out and holding it in front of him.

"That makes noise," Rosie pointed out.

"Yep, but what are the chances of managing to sneak attack so many?"

"You make a valid point," Rosie said, throwing the machete back in the trunk and picking up a shotgun. She shoved a few rounds in her pocket. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be," he mumbled. He turned towards Lori and another few people all gathered around her. "Get in the cars and get ready to move. We're gonna go sort out the problem before it multiples and follows us!" he shouted down to them. He waved off Lori's protests and started towards the commotion. Rosie followed him.

It took them five minutes to clear the dead and end the lives of the infected living. Rosie grimaced as she surveyed the scene and the destruction. This was mindless and tragic and absolutely terrible.

"Come on, before we end up with more on our backs," Shane said.

Rosie nodded, twisting on her heels and walking back to her car with him. She got in, started it up and swung out off the road, waiting for Shane's car to do the same. Another car also looked to be joining them. Rosie took a deep breath and blinked back the tears in her eyes.

She followed the convoy off the road and away from the highway. She paid little attention to the direction or how long they'd been driving, which she cursed herself for. Now was not the time to drop the ball. Eventually they came to a stop in what appeared to be a nature park area. It was surrounded by forest and there were high mountains to one side that had helped form a quarry and some sort of body of water.

Everyone seemed to jump out their cars at the same time, but Rosie stayed put. She grabbed her phone and texted Dean her new co-ordinates. The phones might be down but the satellites were still up, and she'd been pigging backing off them for years.

She clambered out the car and popped the trunk again, avoiding Shane's watchful and wary gaze. She slipped a small pistol into a holster and her favourite knife into its sheath, then attatched them to a secondary belt and put it on. She shut the trunk and stalked over to the group, listening to their chattering about how to set up a camp in the little area. She scanned the trees lining the area and spotted a couple of bumbling dead guys wondering towards them. Without even notifying the group, she quietly broke away from them and dispatched the two threats with barely any effort.

As she wiped the blood off her knife, she looked back to see the small group gaping at her.

"What?" she said, feeling more than a little self-conscious and more than a little irritated that she did.

"You didn't even blink," the woman from the other car whispered.

Rosie huffed and shook her head. "Blinking gets you killed."

She trudged back to the small group as Shane introduced himself, Lori and Carl to the other family that had followed them.

"I'm Ed, this is my wife Carol and my daughter Sophia," he said, laying a possesive hand on each member of his family.

Rosie rejoined the group and all eyes turned to her. "What?"

"What's your name?" Shane asked, frowning at her.

"Oh..." She mulled over whether it was worth lying and giving a false name before deciding it was pointless. "Rosie."

"Nice to meet you Rosie, and thanks for the assist," Shane said, motioning to the dead guys and obviously implying the rest she'd taken down as well.

"So, what now?" Ed grunted. "Way I see it, we're all fucking screwed!"

Shane glared at the overweight man and flicked his eyes towards the two children. "We can set up a camp here. There's plenty to live off, we just have to learn how to use it," Shane said. "We rest up today and tonight, then maybe one or two of us can head back into the city tomorrow and try to find some camping gear. Tents, sleeping bags, that sort of thing."

Ed scoffed. "Whatever man."

"You got a better idea?" Shane snapped and Ed went silent. "Yeah, I thought so."

The next few hours consisted of wondering around the campsite and getting familiar with their surroundings. Shane instructed everyone on what to do and when, no one going against him. Rosie didn't much care for following orders but she cared even less for giving them. After they'd arranged their cars and repositioned them in more convenient locations, they sat down to rest and eat. Rosie had already revealed that she'd been sitting on quite the haul. Crammed into the back of her car were all manner of food and drink, anything that would last long term. The look of relief and surprise on the faces of the not-so-strangers when Rosie told them she was more than happy to share it all was priceless.

They'd not long sat down to eat when the sound of an engine could be heard in the distance. Shane had already jumped up to greet the approaching van, his gun at the ready. Rosie watched on warily but decided against action, something she felt the others weren't exactly pleased about. As the van pulled up, Shane raised his gun.

"Police. Get out of the van real slow." He kept his gun trained on the driver as he did as asked and slowly slid out of his seat.

"Woah woah woah, we come in peace dude!" the guy said, his hands raised. "I'm T-dog and this here's my buddy Glenn. I picked him up in the city. The whole place is overrun, and the highway too. I've been up to this park before and figured it wasn't a bad place to stop for the night and maybe readjust..."

Glenn kept his hands in the air and looked from Shane to the group and back again.

Shane considered what he was saying. "You armed?"

"No man, neither of us are," T-dog said.

"Then how the hell d'you make it out?" Rosie piped up with a frown.

"Ran like hell and hoped to God I'd make it," Glenn said. "And a crowbar."

"I was in the van the whole time," T-dog explained. "I was helping the old folks from my church get to the refugee centres..." He fell silent and so did everyone else. They all knew that those centres had fallen.

"Come on, come eat," Shane said, lowering his gun and gesturing for the two men to join them.

"So what? We're just gonna take every waife and stray that turns up?" Ed grumbled.

"We took in you, didn't we?" Shane muttered back.

T-dog and Glenn came to sit in the small circle that the group had instinctively chosen to arrange themselves into. Everyone was introduced and food was passed out to the newcomers who looked like they couldn't be more grateful. The conversation soon struck up again, floating from the cause of this apocolypse to how they were all going to survive it.

Another few hours went by before more people started arriving, and it soon became apparent that everyone who knew about this place was possibly getting the same idea. Rosie groaned internally, she was not a people person and at this rate, the wonderful haul she'd brought with her wouldn't last them all more than a couple of days. Shane seemed to have figured that much out too as he looked around at the ever increasing campsite and took in all the bodies milling around.

"Okay, I think we need rules and we need to assign some jobs and stuff, or people are gonna start getting real twitchy," he murmured to Rosie. She'd taken a minute to linger in the tree line, the noise of the small crowd beginning to drive her mad.

"Yeah, that's probably not a bad idea," she agreed, feeling herself getting twitchy at the idea of being seen as Shane's second in command.

"What d'you reckon about keeping this place safe? Any suggestions?" he asked.

Rosie sighed and shook her head. "Well for starters, everyone needs to keep the damn noise down. I know we're miles away from nowhere but any attention we're drawing to ourselves is bad attention," she said.

Shane nodded. "Yeah, we don't want to attract the dead..."

"Or many more of the living either," Rosie muttered.

"No, I suppose our resources are limited enough," he said.

Rosie shook her head. "That's not what I meant." Shane gave her a curious look before she continued on. "It going to take a certain kind of stomach and a certain kind of person to get much further than this, to bash someone's brains in no matter if they're living or dead. Self-preservation has to be a real strong character trait in anyone who's going to survive, well, almost anyone. This sort of world will bring out the worst in us, not the best, and to be immune to the violence and paranoia it will take to make it...it'll just make us all a different kind of monster..."

Shane considered her words for a moment before looking up at her. "You seem pretty immune..."

"I never told you I wasn't a monster," Rosie said.

"...you saved us. There's no way your a monster," Shane said, shaking his head.

Rosie scoffed. "You never heard the phrase 'you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villian'? I'm not dead yet, and I can assure you, it's made me a monster."

Shane just continued to look at her, not really sure what to say. Rosie just looked dead ahead and watched the camp, watched how they all talked and tried to get to know one another. She watched as a few of them tried to assert some dominance over others and she could see the arguments not taking long to start.

"They need a leader, that's for sure," she stated, raising an eyebrow as two of them looked to square off against each other.

"You wanna lead 'em?" Shane asked.

"Fuck no! I don't do leadership," Rosie chuckled sardonically.

"So you're used to following?" he asked.

Rosie shook her head. "I'm used to being alone."

"So, what do we do with 'em?" Shane sighed, surveying the camp.

"Give them all roles. Cooking, cleaning, foraging...those two redneck assholes look like they might be good hunters, going on the easy way the shorter one holds that crossbow..." Rosie said.

"I don't trust 'em," Shane muttered.

"I don't trust anyone," Rosie said with a shrug. "I wouldn't be surprised if those two hatch a plan to steal all our stuff and run away with it, but maybe if we give them the benefit of the doubt, and send them off into the forest for hours on end, they might not end up being the apparent assholes they seem to be."

Shane shrugged and nodded. "You fancy addressing the group with me? Laying down the rules and giving out jobs?"

"No," Rosie said, snickering at Shane's exasperated expression. "You'll be fine." She patted him on the shoulder a couple times and smiled. "I'll go talk to the rednecks, if that helps?"

Shane nodded and sighed, heading towards the bulk of the group while Rosie made her way over to the two men hanging around on the outside of the crowd, despite being the first to turn up after T-dog and Glenn.

"Hey lil darlin', can we help you?" The older man drawled, watching Rosie as she walked over. He looked her up and down, smiling somewhat lecherously.

"I'm Rosie-"

"I'll bet'chu are," he chuckled. "I'm Merle an' this here is my baby brother Daryl."

"Hi," Rosie said, giving a nonchalant wave to Daryl, who barely grunted back.

"So, what brings you all the way out to the two of us?" Merle asked. "We ain't exactly screaming friendly..."

"I was wondering how good you were with that crossbow..." Rosie nodded at the bow in Daryl's hands.

"Good enough," Merle answered. "He's better."

"Then it's him I'm interested in," Rosie said.

Merle whistled and winked at Daryl who curled his lip in what appeared to be disgust but Rosie thought was probably more embarrassment.

"What d'you want?" Daryl muttered, giving her a piercing look.

"We need to establish some long term sustainability. This food isn't gonna last for long and when it runs out there's too many of us to last without doing supply runs every other day at least," Rosie explained.

"What's that got to do with me?" Daryl frowned.

"I was wondering if you could hunt? The forest is big and looks like it could be fairly lucrative to a skilled shot and someone who knows what they're doing..." Rosie paused, looking at him and waiting for a reply.

"What does he get for his efforts?" Merle spoke up, peering contemplatively at her.

"A place in the group. A share of the rest of the food we get...we're all gonna have jobs to do, I figured hunting could be yours. Take it or leave, it's no skin off my back. Hell, I could probably fair well enough myself but I don't have a silent weapon..." Rosie shrugged.

Merle laughed. "Cause that little ol' pistol is gonna catch you a lot."

"I like how you're assuming that this lil old pistol is all I've got," Rosie smirked and folded her arms.

Merle stood up straight and suddenly became much more interested in Rosie. "You got weapons? What kind?"

"The kind that don't concern you," Rosie said.

"Aw, come on sweetheart, sharing is caring," Merle grinned.

"Yeah, that's the problem, 'cause I don't really care," Rosie said.

"Well, maybe you can be persuaded," Merle chuckled.

"You stay out of my Honey or you will regret it," Rosie said, glaring as she pointed a finger at him.

"Your honey? You name your car? And what the hell kind of name is that?" Merle laughed.

"The one I gave her. I don't give a shit what you think about me or my car, you touch her and you're a dead man," Rosie growled.

Merle snickered and stepped forwards, putting himself toe to toe with her. She could feel his breath or her face and see the manic gleam in his eye. "Sweetheart, I am not a man you want to threathen..."

Rosie shrugged. "That's convenient, 'cause I don't make threats. I make promises."

"You don't know who you're dealin' with-"

"No. You don't know who your dealing with," Rosie cut him off. "Men like you are a dime a dosen and I can promise you I've faced far worse. You don't scare me. You never will. So, d'you want to help out and hunt? Be a part of this group? Or are you sticking to your little duo and keeping to yourselves?"

Merle frowned at her, still not moving away. He looked her up and down, his gaze traveling slowly over her breasts and her hips before landing back on her face. He smirked.

"If I play nice, can I tempt ya into showing some sort of physical gratitude?" he asked, winking at her.

"I won't slit your throat while you sleep? Is that good enough?" Rosie asked, starting to lose her temper with the asshole.

Merle laughed again and shook his head. "Come on darlin' it's the end of the world..." He put a hand on her hip and squeezed.

"Hands off or I'll hurt you," Rosie snarled.

"Sweet lil' thing like you-" Merle was interrupted by the excrutiating pain that came from Rosie taking hold of his fingers as she twisted and bent them. He jumped around the small spot, howling in pain.

"Fuckin' bitch!!" He hollered.

"We'll do the huntin'," Daryl said, looking a little bit exasperated with his brother.

"What?! You're gonna do it after she broke my fuckin' fingers!" Merle screamed at him.

Daryl shrugged. "She told ya she was gunna hurt ya. Ya should've listened."

"I'll fix them for you, if you can quit whining like a baby for a few seconds," Rosie offered, shooting Daryl a small smile. He returned it with barely a twitch of his mouth.

"I ain't no baby! You broke my goddamn fingers!" Merle yelled. It was starting to draw attention now and Shane was looking mighty interested. "D'you have any idea what broken fingers feels like, Princess?!"

"D'you want me to fix them or not?" Rosie huffed. "'Cause if not, you're causing a scene and you need to calm down and get over it."

"Fuck you bitch!" Merle snarled.

"Come on Merle, ya busted ya fingers a'fore, it ain't worth this fuss," Daryl grumbled. "Just splint 'em up and get on with it."

"How the hell d'you expect me ta hunt with busted fingers you crazy bitch!" Merle cried.

"I don't. You said Daryl was better with the bow," Rosie said.

"Well, I could have helped with protection. I could've protected you, and this camp!"

"I don't need protecting. I think I've made that abundently clear."

"You broke my fingers!" Merle hollared again.

"No I didn't. I dislocated them. There's a huge difference. Specifically, how much pain is inflicted," Rosie said.

"Bitch." Merle glared at her, holding his damaged hand in the other one.

"Crazy bitch. And I advise that you don't forget it," Rosie said, giving him a pointed look.

"Just fix my fuckin' fingers," Merle snapped.

"With pleasure," Rosie smiled, walking towards him. She took his hand in hers and turned it so his palm was facing the floor. "By the way, this is going to hurt like hell..."

Rosie didn't even give him chance to register what she'd said before she took hold of his fingers and yanked hard on them, pulling and twisting them back into their sockets. Merle howled and started jumping around again, spewing all sorts of terrible expletives at Rosie.

"Everything okay here?" Shane asked.

"Fine. Merle here was just making a whole bunch of noise over nothing," Rosie explained.

"It weren't nothing! You pulled my fingers outta their damn sockets!" Merle barked.

"Would you like me to tell him why?" Rosie asked, raising a challenging eyebrow.

Merle glared at her as Shane turned to her and frowned.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Nothing interesting," Rosie said. "Daryl said he'd hunt for the group though."

"Daryl ain't gonna do shit for you!" Merle growled.

"Hey! Since when is it up to you what I do?!" Daryl snapped at Merle.

"She damn near broke my fingers!!" Merle roared at him.

"Yeah, and it was your own damn fault! I ain't hauling ass outta here now Merle! Where else're we gunna go?! Ain't like we got anywhere else we could be!" he yelled, gesturing wildly at his brother. It was the most vocal he'd been since they'd got to camp. Merle had been shouting profanities every five minutes from their spot since they'd arrived but Daryl had hung back and stayed fairly quiet.

Merle snarled and glared at him. "Whatever you say baby brother," he said sweetly, an angry look on his face. He stalked up to Rosie and stuck his face in hers. "And you best sleep with one eye open missy..."

"Merle!" Daryl snapped.

Rosie rolled her eyes at Merle. "I don't really sleep, so it won't be a problem."

Several hours later, the group (now significantly larger) were all sat around a glowing campfire and talking amongst themselves. Shane had proved a strong and capable leader, giving jobs to most members of the camp and creating some sembalance of community in the very short space of time they'd been together.

Small groups had formed and people were starting to get to know one another a little bit better. Rosie found herself part of the original few who'd first parked up, which included T-dog, Glenn, Daryl, a sulky Merle, an older man called Dale and two girls he'd been travelling with, Andrea and Amy.

"This thing is so whacked," Glenn muttered. "I mean, the dead are walking and...like..where did it even start? _Why_ did it even start?"

"Reminds me of the time I went huntin' in the woods for squirrel," Daryl said. "Saw a chupracara."

Rosie's head snapped up and she looked strangely at him.

"A chupracarbra? A blood sucking dog?" T-dog sniggered. "You believe in a blood sucking dog?"

"You believe in the dead walkin' around?" Daryl huffed back. "Yeah, that's what I thought," he muttered as the group fell quiet. "Don't seem so ridiculous now..."

Shane turned to Rosie, a playful smile on his face. She cringed, knowing what he was likely to say.

"You said you've had a lot of experience with monsters Rosie." He grinned. "Ever seen a chupacarbra?"

Rosie sighed and liked Shane a little less. He was clearly trying to taunt the man and he had no idea what was really out there.

"No, never seen a chupracarbra," she said, pausing as she watched a mocking smirk appear on Shane's face. What the hell? The world had gone to shit, right? So she might as well go all in for crazy... "I had a friend who went up against one once though. Sneaky little fuckers they are. Dude damn near died."

"What?" Shane frowned as his face fell. "Are you serious?"

Rosie nodded. "I don't joke about shit like that."

"A chupracarbra?" Shane reiterated.

"Yes," she said. She could feel Daryl's gaze on her, those deep blue eyes penetrating her very skin.

"When you said monsters, what did you mean?" Shane asked, giving her a dubious look.

"I don't really want to answer that question," she said irritably.

"Why?" Daryl grunted.

"Because they're all less likely to believe me, and therefore you, about the chubracarbra," she explained, somewhat begrudingly.

"I don't need their belief. I know what what I saw," Daryl said. Rosie was quietly impressed with his conviction.

"So, monsters, tell us..." Glenn said, nudging her encouragingly.

"Fine. But you won't believe me," Rosie huffed.

"Like Daryl said, the dead are walking around...try us." Glenn shrugged.

Rosie took a deep breath. "Okay." She nodded before launching into an extensive list. "Vampires, werewolves, wendigo, ghosts, tricksters, djinn, gods, demons, angels-"

"Angels?" Lori interrupted. "Since when were angels monsters?"

"I'm betting since about the time God left heaven and didn't come back," Rosie said nonchalantly. "Angels don't do well without orders. They do their best but usually end up following some idiot who's hung up on their own warped interpretation of God's word. They're like fundamentalists, with a shit ton of power and heavenly strength. Some of them aren't too bad. One in particular but that's a whole other story, available in print and for free online if you know where to look." She sniggered at her own little joke, feeling the closest to tears she'd been since the whole world died.

Lori looked slightly worried, but more for Rosie's mental health than anything else. Rosie groaned internally, knowing exactly what she was thinking.

"Anything else?" Andrea asked. "Not that you can prove it now since the dead started walking." She scoffed and fell quiet as she registered the grimace on Rosie's face. "What?"

"Well, whatever this is...it's spreading to the monsters as well. They aren't just dying and you can't kill them with a headshot like you can most of these things..." Rosie shrugged and looked apologetically around the group.

"So how do we kill them?" Glenn asked.

"I don't know. I'm assuming we just have to kill them the usual monster way and the walking dead way," she said.

"Assuming?" Glenn frowned.

"Well, I haven't come across an undead monster yet, so I haven't been able to test the theory," she sighed.

"Where did you come from, before all this?" Shane asked after a quiet few minutes.

"Not the psych ward, if that's what you're asking," Rosie said.

"No. I was just wondering what you did before the world ended?" he said.

Rosie chewed on her bottom lip. "I was in Miami on a case. I was dealing with a woman in white..."

"What's a woman in white?" T-dog asked.

Rosie scrunched her face up, not really wanting to tell them. "It's the ghost of a woman who killed her children and then committed suicide after finding out her husband cheated on her."

"Oh..." The group fell silent again for a few seconds.

"What were you doing before that?" Shane said.

"Hunting a witch," Rosis said.

"A witch?" Shane reiterated in that same disbelieving tone.

"Yep." Rosie held back the irritated huff that wanted to go with it.

"Is it worth asking what happened before all that?" Shane said, worried about the answer.

"Probably not," Rosie mumbled. "Before the witch I was dealing with a demon, before the demon it was a wendigo, then a shtritega, then a few ghosts all on the trot, found a stray leviathan, a nest of vamps, a werewolf, a shapeshifter...the list goes on..."

"How in the hell d'you end up doing all that stuff?" Dale frowned. "You're so young. It doesn't seem right."

Rosie cleared her throat and shook her head. She was not ready to share that story. "I'm twenty nine. It isn't that young."

"Still, how d'you manage to get into...monsters?" Amy spoke up.

"It's the family business," Rosie mumbled.

"The family business?" Ed scoffed. "You mean your whole family are a bunch of kooks?" He sniggered and shook his head.

Before anyone could jump down his throat or try to half-heartedly defend her, Rosie had taken a breath and nodded. "Pretty much, yeah..." To be fair, she wasn't actually lying. The job had taken it's toll and you can't see the things they'd seen or go through the things they'd been through without it having some sort of psychological effect.

"Where are your family now?" Lori asked quietly.

"Kansas," Rosie said. "They're moving this way. I texted our co-ordinates when we got here."

"But all the connections are down. The networks are all dead. How'd you manage that?" Shane said with a frown.

Rosie winced. "Hunting monsters isn't exactly lucrative...we learnt a good bit of hacking and my brother's a bit of a whiz with a computer so...we've been piggybacking off the satellite systems for years. It's not like we can pay a monthly tariff for a phone or afford to top one up every few weeks, and we need to keep our numbers in case anyone is trying to reach us with a problem. Not to mention the times we had to be...uh...persons of offical standing...?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ed huffed.

"They impersonated officers of the law, right?" Glenn said, looking at Rosie with a smirk.

"Right," she said, smiling back at him.

"You know that's illegal?" Shane grumbled.

"Yeah well, it's not like you can just walk up to a detective and say, hey that murder wasn't committed by a person, you're looking for a ghost and the only way to stop it is to dig up their bones then salt and burn them." Rosie shook her head. "Would you have listened or would you have had us committed?"

Shane grumbled something and shrugged.

"So, if ya don't get paid for it, why do it?" Daryl asked, frowning at her. "Don't seem like a safe job or one with much thanks...so why?"

Rosie shrugged. "Someone's gotta do it. I suppose it's just the way we were raised. We don't know anything else, it's in our bones."

"How'd you survive if you weren't getting paid?" Glenn asked. "I mean, it's not like you can hold down a real job, is it?"

"Credit card fraud and pool hustling," Rosie said unabashedly.

"You're a criminal," Shane blurted. "You saved our lives, you've saved a lot of lives, but you're a criminal..."

"Not all criminals are bad people," Rosie huffed. "Some of them are just blessed with the sheer dumb luck of being born to some questionable people."

"Amen to that sister," Merle mumbled, the first words he'd spoken all evening.

"So, your parents? They were questionable?" Shane said, looking as though he was trying to work out how Rosie had ended up where she did, doing what she was doing.

"They are not up for discussion," she said, shutting him straight down.

"You got any siblings?" Glenn asked. "I've got two sisters... _had_ two sisters." He swallowed the obvious lump in his throat.

"Sorry," Rosie said quietly. "I've got two brothers, three if you count my unofficially adopted one. Dean's the oldest, he's six years older than me. Sam's nearly three years older than me, technically we're half-siblings. I was a shock, that's for sure." She let out a small laugh. "Castiel is the adopted one. He's older than all of us but he's been family for so long now it's hard to remember a time when he wasn't with us."

"Castiel is a strange name," Glenn mused.

"Well...he's an angel..." Rosie confessed.

"An angel?" Lori looked like she was two seconds away from losing it.

"Yeah," Rosie said.

"An angel is like a brother to you? What makes you so special?" she frowned. "Why not the rest of us?"

"I wasn't so special," Rosie said. "It's my brothers. Dean was the Archangel Michael's vessel and Sam was Lucifer's vessel. They were supposed to fight and bring about the apocolypse like at the end of the bible."

"Is that what this is?!" Shane growled.

"No, this is Asmodeaus screwing shit up," Rosie grumbled. "He's a Prince of Hell. Sam and Dean stopped the apocolypse. Well, the one that was scheduled at least."

"So you do know what happened?!" Shane snapped.

"I never said I didn't. I just asked you what made you think I knew..." Rosie took a deep breath. "It's a demonic virus. Asmodeaus tweaked it and made it more powerful and stronger than it was before. He lost control of it and he's dead now so he can't fix it."

"Well how do we fix it?" Glenn cried.

" _We_ can't, at least not yet. We kind of just have to wait it out. See what everyone else comes up with. This thing, it's taking everyone and everything. The angels will be trying to find a cure, the demons will be too. I really don't know if there is one, but there's nothing we can do right now other than survive." Rosie gave them a sympathetic smile as she looked around at them all.

"You've faced worse than this though, right? I mean, if for arguments sake I believe you, you've saved the world from one apocolypse before, right?" T-dog looked at Rosie hopefully.

"Well, we usually manage to stop them before things get this bad..." Rosie couldn't bear to look at the group.

" _Them_? How many apocolypses have their been?!" Glenn looked more than mildly panicked.

"Uh...this would be the fifth I think?" she muttered, trying to remember how many times they'd stopped the world from ending.

"So...you and your brothers have saved the whole world at least four times already?!" Glenn was astounded. "What happened those times?!"

"Well, there was the biblical apocalypse. Then there was the time that the King of Hell opened purgatory and all the leviathan escaped, and then they planned to fatten us all up and keep us like cattle so they could eat us. And after that was the Darkness, which turned out to be God's sister. That was around the time the sun turned red for a few days," Rosie said.

"Oh I remember that!" Glenn said.

"Yeah...and then, the last one was where Lucifer had a son and he was so powerful that he accidentally opened a rift in time and space, which led to another world and the Archangel Michael from that world wanted to invade this one and overtake it with his legion of angels," Rosie finished.

"How long ago was that one?" Shane mumbled.

"About a year ago. They're getting more and more frequent. Makes me think that maybe the world would just like to die..." she sighed and shook her head.

"It sure feels that way right now darlin'," Merle drawled.

"Yeah, it sure does." Rosie nodded and stared deep into the glowing embers of the fire. She listened to the conversations around her and tried to concentrate but honestly, she'd checked out a long time ago. Her mind was with her brothers, hoping and praying that they were still okay.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam sighed and stared at the phone in his hand. He shook his head and put it back in his pocket, turning to face Dean.

"So that went down well then," he scoffed.

"She's gonna regret that if those are the last words she ever says to me," Sam grumbled.

"What did she say?"

"Well fuck you too then," Sam reiterated.

Dean sniggered. "Yeah, she ain't gonna regret that."

Sam couldn't help the smirk that made it's way onto his face as he shook his head. Dean was right, there was no way Rosie would regret it. Hell, if someone told her those would be her last words to him she'd probably shrug her shoulders and say it again.

"What do we do now?" Sam asked.

"We go find her," Dean said.

"What about mom? And Cas?" Sam looked at Dean, wondering what his brother was thinking.

"Well, I'm sure mom'll come with us," Dean said, not exactly confident about that.

"And Cas?"

"We'll leave him a note or something, tell him where we're going. I don't know where the hell he's got to anyway but it ain't like he hasn't got wings."

"Yeah, okay," Sam said with a nod. "I'll go pack a bag, meet you in ten?"

"Sure," Dean said. "I'll go talk to mom."

Sam nodded again and walked off towards his room. Dean sighed and headed to Mary's room, not really sure how it was going to go. It wasn't that his mom didn't care, but since Amara had brought her back from the dead, Mary and Rosie's relationship had been strained, to say the least.

Dean knew it was hard for his mom, seeing that the love of her life had fathered another child with another woman. But she didn't know the whole story, she had no idea where Rosie had come from and what she'd been through, and because Rosie was stubborn as hell she refused to let anyone tell her.

Dean supposed Rosie wouldn't have been so against the idea if Mary hadn't taken Rosie's existence as a personal insult, giving the girl the cold shoulder from the minute she laid eyes on her and discovered who she was.

He wondered down the hall and towards his mother's room. He knocked and waited for a reply, opening the door when he heard her answer.

"Hey mom," he said, shuffling a little.

"Hey Dean, what's up?" Mary asked.

"Well, we finally managed to get hold of Roe," he said, watching as her shoulders tensed and she stilled slightly. "She's stuck in Georgia, so me and Sam are gonna go on a little road trip and try to find her..."

"What?!" Mary whirled round, eyes wide. "Dean, I know she's your... _sister_ ," she tried really hard not to scrunch her nose up at that thought, "but that doesn't mean you should be sacrificing yourself to save her!"

"She doesn't want us to go," Dean said, his heart aching a little at the persistent dislike his mother and sister had for one another. "She told us to stay here and stay safe-"

"Well she obviously wasn't very convincing, was she?" Mary bit back.

"Mom! You know as well as she does that when we've made our minds up, there's not a lot anyone can do to stop us!" Dean argued. "We love her. We can't just leave her out there alone!"

"It's halfway across the country Dean! It's hundreds of miles, through dead bodies walking!" Mary looked exasperatedly at him. "I can't lose you...not again..."

"And I can't loose her Mom, I'm sorry..." Dean whispered, tears in his eyes.

"Please Dean? Stay? Let her come to us?" Mary pleaded.

"Mom, if I was out there and she was in here, what would she do?" Dean asked. He stared at Mary as she paused and looked at the ground in sad defeat. "What would she do mom?"

Mary shook her head and clamped her eyes shut.

"Mom? _What would she do?_ " Dean asked again, slowly and with added intent. "I know you don't like her, I know you don't get along, I know how you feel about her but...you do know her, and you know what she'd do if I was out there..." He let out a puff of air and shrugged. "What would she do?" He needed Mary to answer him, to acknowledge that his baby sister would never have holed herself up in the bunker and left him alone out there. "Mom?"

"She'd have left already," Mary murmured. It was the only thing she liked about the girl; how close and protective she was with her brothers.

"We're leaving in ten, are you staying here or are you coming with us?" Dean asked.

"I'm coming with you," Mary sighed. "I can't just watch you walk out of here and do nothing..." She shook her head again and looked back up at Dean. "If you're going, so am I."

"Okay," Dean said with a nod. He turned and walked out of the room, going to gather his things.

All three of them jumped in Baby and Dean started her up, pulling out of the bunker's garage. None of them had really been topside in nearly two weeks, so they only had the pointed lack of media updates to illustrate the state of the world. They didn't know how many were still alive or where anyone was. Dean didn't want to risk getting too close to built up areas but they needed to see what the world was like and what was happening.

As evening began to descend Dean decided to pull in on the outskirts of the nearest city; he got the feeling that driving around in such a loud car (much as he loved her) wouldn't be the most sensible thing to do.

"Come on," Dean murmured as he got out of the car. "Stay close." He nodded at the partially-deralict superstore he'd parked in front of. "Let's just do a quick supply run, get a feel for the place and then we'll get the hell out of dodge, okay?"

Sam and Mary both nodded, looking warily around the place. The superstore was called Cloud 9, part of a chain of stores just like it. It had enough of everything for the Winchesters to get what they needed and get out before night fell, allowing them just enough time to find some kind of shelter should they need it.

Dean headed for the main door, finding the whole place deserted. He whistled into the empty space, waiting for anything dead or alive to show itself. Shaking his head he motioned for Mary and Sam to duck through the door and together they started sorting through what was left of the already looted store.

"I got some food stuff back here," Sam called, waving a few tins and some cereal boxes.

"I got toilet paper!" Dean cried happily. "We gotta grab as much of this shit as we can. Future Cas told me to hoard it like it was gold."

"Future Cas?" Mary frowned.

"Yeah, I went to the future," Dean said. "It was the one where Sam said 'yes' to Lucifer and didn't manage to control him long enough to jump in the pit."

"Right..." Mary said, nodding and wondering away to see what she could find.

Dean continued mooching around the store, turning a corner and seeing the gun counter. "Alright! Jackpot! Well, sort of..." The counter was smashed and most of the guns had been taken, even the ammo was pretty much gone, but there were still a few useful bits left. Dean grabbed a bag and started chucking whatever he could find inside it.

He was so busy grabbing stuff, he almost missed the click of a heel on the tiled floor.

"Get out, now." A small woman with long brown hair was stood pointing a shotgun at him. Her eyes were bright and fierce but Dean could see the slight tremor in her hand.

"Or what?" Dean said, pulling his gun on her so fast she didn't have time to react.

"Or I'll shoot you," she hissed.

"Really?" he scoffed. "What's that gonna do? Except kill everyone within a two mile radius."

Amy wavered, not sure what to do. The guy had a point, albeit an irritating one.

"Look darlin' I'm not the one with the trembling hands," Dean said, motioning to her gun as it shook slightly. "I shoot you, you go down and I run fast, I get out alive. You shoot me, I get pissed because that shit hurts, I chase you 'cause I'm pissed and when I'm pissed I get stupid, the dead come running and both of us are still here fighting, we get eaten alive..."

Amy thought about his words and shook her head. "It's not the dead I'm worried about around here," she said.

"What?" Dean frowned, lowering his gun a little. "What d'you mean?"

"The military," Amy said with a whisper, fear evident in her eyes. "The living...they are so much scarier than the dead."

Dean's eyebrows shot up to the top of his forehead. "What's going on with the military?"

Amy shook her head. "Not here." She motioned to the back door and gestured for him to follow.

"My mom and my little brother are still in the store," Dean said.

"I know," Amy said, her eyes resting on his. Her gun was no longer pointed at Dean, instead it was hanging loosely by her side. Dean had tucked his back into his waistband.

"It's cool, we can leave if you want-"

"You won't get out of town, not now," she said. "They're patrolling every night, they'll shoot you on sight."

"What?" Dean's blood ran cold.

"I heard your car pull up," she said. "Does it stand out? Will they notice it?"

"Hell yeah," Dean answered.

"You need to move it," Amy said. "If they see it, they'll hunt you down and you'll end up getting my people killed."

"Wait...there's more of you?" Dean asked. "How have you managed to evade them all for so long?"

"You'll see," Amy said. "Go move your car and round up your family. I'll wait here."

Dean narrowed his eyes at her, taking in the way she stood and the no-nonsense attitude she seemed to have. There was something about her that he couldn't seem to distrust so he simply sighed and went to do as she'd asked. Sam frowned at him as he went, but stayed where he was until Dean returned. He motioned for both Sam and Mary to follow him, introducing them to Amy as she led them through the back of the store and towards the manager's office.

"Before the world went dark I wanted to lay seige to company policy and put a new video game back for myself, you know, so I could pay for it after my shift and play it the day it was released," Amy explained, opening what looked like a door to a cupboard in the wall. "On our quest to find a way to do just that, we discovered an old storgage room full of recalled products that everyone had forgotten about." She motioned for the three of them to climb in.

Sam looked at Dean skeptically; Dean sighed and shook his head, climbing in. Mary followed him and Sam went last, closely followed by Amy.

"When the military started shooting everything up, a bunch of us were already here. Some of us were lucky enough for our families to come find us and we hid in the walls while the soldiers raided the place and killed anyone still alive," Amy said, continuing on with her story. "I was one of the lucky ones. My ex-husband and my daughter came to find me."

"So you've just been living behind here the entire time?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, pretty much," Amy said. "It's a department store. When the soldiers had gone we looted the place and brought as much as we could back here. The soldiers took all the guns back when they first fenced us in and called it quarantine, but some of us were smart enough to grab a few pieces in case we needed them."

"So how many others are here?" Sam asked.

"There's nine of us all together," Amy said.

"How come there was a welcome party of one then?" Mary said, looking back at Amy with a frown.

"Well, at the moment, the security feed is still up and running, and Garrett rigged it so we could watch from back here. We saw you split up and put your weapons away," Amy said. "They all would've been watching us the whole time. I'm surprised Jonah didn't come bursting through the walls when you pointed your gun at me."

"Who's Jonah? He your ex-husband?" Dean asked.

"No..." Amy went strangely silent. "He's my very new boyfriend..."

Dean snickered. "Wow. Now that doesn't sound awkward at all."

"Shut up," Amy muttered. "I could have just shot you."

"Why didn't you?" Sam asked, glancing at her over his shoulder.

Amy shrugged. "He didn't shoot me."

A few minutes later and they came to the storage room that Amy had told them about. Dean walked through first, raising his hands as two men aimed guns at his head. Mary and Sam followed Dean's lead.

"Put those down," Amy huffed, leaning her own shotgun up against the wall.

"What d'you bring them back here for?" Adam asked, glaring at her and the three strangers.

"They'd have been shot on sight if I'd left them there," Amy said. "They feel like good people, okay?"

"He pointed a gun at you," Jonah said, nodding at Dean.

"Yeah! Because I was pointing one at him!" Amy argued.

"Why would you lead total strangers back here," Dina said, looking at the Winchesters with suspicion.

"Because! It's not going to be long before we run out of food and water," Amy sighed. "We are never going to make it outside of these walls alone. They can help us."

"How'd you know that?" Dina asked.

"They point weapons with a steady hand but they don't shoot first," Amy said. "Green eyes could have shot me any time he wanted but he didn't. He chose not to. There aren't many people left who choose not to shoot."

"My name's Dean," Dean said, dropping his hands. Again, Sam and Mary followed his lead.

"Hey!" Adam cried. "Did anyone tell you that you could move?!"

"Dude, if you were gonna shoot us we'd be dead already," Dean said.

"Just because I'm not quick on the trigger, doesn't mean I won't," Adam growled.

"Adam!" Amy snapped. "Cut it out. We're gonna need them, whether we like it or not."

Dean scoffed and turned towards Amy. "No offence darlin' but we're not stopping. We're looking for someone, we're headed to Atlanta."

"Atlanta?" Garrett scoffed back. "Man, they napalmed half the city. This whole thing started over that way somewhere."

"Our sister is with a group of people camped out not far from the city," Dean explained. "I know she's still there and she's still alive. We have to find her."

"And I get that," Amy interupted, "but you aren't getting out of this city in the muscle car you pulled up in while the military are patrolling every few hours. How the hell you got this far is beyond me..."

"We've been holed up in a bunker in Kansas for the last two weeks," Sam said. "Other than knowing about the virus, we don't know much of anything."

Amy took a deep breath and raised an eyebrow. "Well, you've missed a lot, that's for sure."

Jonah nodded and lowered his gun. "Yeah, it's a long story. You might wanna take a seat for this..." He gestured to a make-shift seating area towards the back of the room. Dean, Sam and Mary all walked forwards and settled themselves on various different cushions and pillows.

"So," Amy started, "the infection got out and ended up spreading. It spread faster than anyone expected it too, including all the doctors, the Government...everybody."

"They sent out military task forces to fence off built up areas and create quarantine zones in an attempt to keep people safe and stop it spreading even more," Jonah continued. "They still had no idea how it was carried, only that if someone was bitten or close to death, they'd re-animate and start feeding on anything still living."

"So, they picked quarantine zones that had gone mostly untouched by infection, cornered it off and set curfews for those still inside," Adam joined in.

Amy couldn't control the wobble in her voice as she spoke again. "Then they took arms and walked street by street and house by house, shooting anything that dared to move outside of the quarantine zones."

Sam swallowed slowly. "This store is outside a quarantine zone, right?"

Amy nodded. "We're still pretty close to one though, which is why this area is still patrolled."

"We avoided all built up areas the whole drive over here," Dean said. "We only came close to the city now 'cause I needed to know what sort of state the world was in and 'cause we were getting low on supplies."

"Well, looks like your stuck here now. At least until we find a way out of here," Adam said, stashing his own gun and giving up on the hostility.

"Thanks," Sam said. "And in that case, I suppose you oughta know, my name's Sam. This is our mom, Mary. And Dean already told you his name..."

"I'm Amy," Amy said. She went around the room, introducing them to Adam (her ex), Jonah (her new boyfriend), Emma (her daughter), Kelly, (Jonah's ex), Garrett (a friend and co-worker), Glenn (her manager), Jerusha (his wife), and Dina (her best friend and deputy manager). The boys and Mary all nodded and smiled, particularly as Garrett added in the colourful little details they needed in order to make the whole ordeal interesting.

"Well, it's nice to meet you folks." Sam smiled, inclining his head slightly.

Amy couldn't stop the odd little chuckle that slipped past her lips. "We get how funny it looks."

Dean grinned. "Like something from a late night sitcom."

"Yeah, I'm also pregnant by the way," Amy said with a grim smile. "The baby is Adam's. And Dina is pregnant with Glenn and Jerusha's baby, she's a surrogate."

"Wow," Dean said, trying not to smirk and failing. "You couldn't write that shit."

"You certainly couldn't," Amy said, also smirking a little. The tension in the room broke as everyone started giggling amongst themselves.

Dean looked curiously at them all.

"If you don't laugh, you cry," Kelly explained with a small smile.

Dean nodded, smiling back.

The Winchesters decided to hunker down at the store for the night and reassess their situation in the morning. Dean lay back looking at the ceiling and trying to think of a way out, a way to keep moving towards Atlanta without being killed. He drifted off eventually, managing three of his four hours for the week.

Amy found Dean the next morning, crouched on the roof doing some re-con.

"You didn't sleep much last night," she said, lying on the floor next to him and pretending to be dead.

"Never do," he muttered.

"They patrol every two to three hours," Amy informed him. "Helicopter flies over head at 10am, 2pm and 8pm."

"So you've done your research," he said.

"Kelly did actually," Amy said, glancing up at him.

"Kelly...she's the blonde chick your boyfriend was shacked up with before you, right?" Dean asked.

"Yep," Amy said with a sigh.

"How come she did the scouting missions?" Dean said, his brow furrowed.

"Honestly? I think she just wanted to get away from everyone," Amy admitted. "I mean, you can't blame the girl."

"No, you can't," he agreed.

"So, anything else you looking for?" Amy asked. "Or can we go inside now?"

"We can go inside," Dean sighed, groaning as he stood up and walked back indoors with the store supervisor.

"Come on, everyone else is up and they're all ready for breakfast." Amy smiled as she led Dean back through the store towards the rest of the group.

Dean cleared his throat. "If you've done all the necessary re-con, why are you still hanging around?"

"Because there's no one in our group who's hand doesn't tremble when they're pointing a gun at someone," Amy said honestly. "Right now, my daughter is safe. My friends are safe. If we go out there...I don't know what's going to happen. But I do know that there's no one in our group who can pull a gun on someone and shoot them without hesitating."

"I hesitated when I pulled my gun on you," Dean argued.

"No, you'd assessed that I hadn't fired and because you're a good person, you chose not to fire too. That's very different to hesitating," Amy countered.

"I'm not a good person," Dean mumbled. "I haven't been a good person for a long long time."

"Well, you're good enough for me," Amy said. "You're good enough for this new world."

Dean merely grunted in neither an approving or disapproving tone. He rejoined the small group and nodded at Sam. He smiled at Mary and went to sit with her for a while.

"Have you called Rosanna yet?" Mary asked, always referring to her by her full name.

"No, and I don't plan on calling," Dean said. "At least for a few days."

"Days?! Dean, she could be dead by then," Mary whisper-hissed. "We could be leaving good people who need us for a dead girl-"

"Don't." Dean glared at her, cutting her off. "Don't Mom."

Mary took a deep breath and sighed, calming herself. "Dean, I get it-"

"No, you don't. You think you do and you say you do but you don't. Because if you did, you wouldn't be doing this. You wouldn't be trying to convince me to give up on her," Dean growled.

"I'm trying to convince you to be logical!" Mary cried quietly, still trying to keep their conversation to themselves. "You heard what they were saying about the military. And the hoards of dead...Dean, she doesn't stand much of a chance..."

Dean didn't want to hurt his mom. He really didn't. He'd hurt her enough already, inside her head trying to bring her back, but he needed her to hear him. He needed her to understand.

"Mom, she is the only person in my life who hasn't ever left me," Dean whispered, tears in his eyes. "She's the only one who hasn't ever walked away or given up or died on me. No matter how hard we fight, how much we disagree or how long it takes us to forgive one another for the stupid shit we've done...she's never left. She...I can't lose her...I can't stop trying...I can't give up..." A single tear fell from his eye and he wiped it away, knowing all the while that he'd made his mom feel awful. He didn't want to but he couldn't keep going with her always trying to persuade him to stop.

Mary nodded.

"I'm sorry Mom," he said softly.

"I know," she murmured. "It's just...you might be searching forever Dean. How're you going to know if it's in vain? How're you ever going to know if she's gone for good?"

"I'll know," Dean said firmly. "Trust me, I'll know. She'll make sure I know. Same as I'd do for her."

Mary nodded again and bit her tongue.

"So, how long are you guys sticking around?" Kelly asked, coming to sit with them out of nowhere.

Dean shrugged. "As long as it takes to get out of here without being killed."

"So, a while then," she said with a sympathetic smile. "You gonna take us with you?"

"Depends," Dean said.

"On what?"

"On whether you all wanna come with us," Dean answered. "Amy wants to leave, but that doesn't mean the rest of you do. I get where she's coming from, about supplies but...you are pretty safe in here. Safety isn't something all that easy to come by these days."

"No, but niether is sanity and I'm about climbing the walls at this point," she said with an amused little huff.

"I'll take whoever wants to come." Dean smiled and winked at her, grinning as Kelly blushed and looked at the floor.

"I, uh, I heard what you said about your sister," she mumbled.

Dean's smiled faded and he nodded as he swallowed the lump in his throat.

"She sounds pretty special," Kelly whispered. "I wish I had someone who loved me like that, you know? Someone who'd travel half way across the country in a terrifying apocolypse just to keep me safe..."

"Well, it doesn't come without it's shit," Dean chuckled softly. "We've had to endure more than most families, so it only stands to reason that our bond is that little bit tighter than most."

Kelly nodded. "I don't have much family. I had parents but...you know, the world ended..." She sniffed and shook her head. "I don't know if they're dead or alive. They lived too far away to come here."

"I'm sorry," Dean said. "Not knowing is just as painful."

Kelly nodded, taking a deep breath. "And my sister, well, I doubt you'd believe what happened to her but the dead are walking so you never know..." she sniggered a little sardonically.

"Try me," Dean said, nudging her gently.

"She was killed, by a werewolf," Kelly said, her eyes flicking up to his. She expected to see his disbelief all over his face but was instead met with deep compassion.

"A demon killed my both my parents," Dean told her. "My Mom came back from the dead, my brother did too after he took Lucifer to Hell. A family of immortal psychopaths killed my other little sister. Leviathan killed my stand-in father figure. Hellhounds got some of my first best friends. An angel killed another friend who was like a brother to me...the list goes on," he said, waving with his hand.

"You're a hunter," Kelly said, no question implied.

Dean saw the sadness in her eyes and shook his head. "Your sister got bit, didn't she?"

Kelly nodded. "She couldn't control it. She was only twelve at the time..."

"I'm so sorry," Dean murmured.

"It's not your fault," she said. "The man that did it, the hunter...I remember he looked almost as upset as I was."

Dean shrugged. "You feel all the ones you couldn't save."

"But you try, and not many people can say that," Kelly said, holding his gaze. "Don't get much thanks for it either, I bet."

"We don't do too badly," he said with a small smile. "The little people care. It's the big ones that don't like us, they're the ones that put us on Most Wanted lists and try to arrest us every chance they get."

Kelly chuckled. "Ain't that a bitch."

"Ain't it just," Dean chuckled back.


End file.
